Gouging is good

I set out this morning to tackle one of the creepiest things ever produced by the John Locke Foundation . . . a wide-ranging treatise on the glory of price gouging. But before I could dig in to dismantle it, I found that NC Policy Watch had already shredded the Puppetshow "report." In what appears to be a new enthusiasm for smacking down the wackos on the right, NCPW has a column entitled Radical Right Reality Check which really looks promising.

This week, our market fundamentalist friends have saved us the trouble of digging beneath the surface by putting the pro-price gouging, pro-usury spiel right up front in the press release that accompanies their new “Macon Series Report” ... North Carolina’s Price-Control Laws: Harming Those They’re Meant to Help. Here are some zingers from the report:

On price gouging — “From the perspective of economic science, and particularly the subdiscipline (sic) known as ‘price theory,’ the concept of ‘price gouging’ or ‘extreme pricing’ or ‘unreasonable pricing’ has no meaning.”

On antitrust laws — “A careful study of business history shows that there are no real-world examples of monopolization through predatory pricing.”

On anti-usury laws — “In addition to helping someone get through a short-term financial crises (sic), payday lending can provide some people a chance to save money.”

On the minimum wage “Low wages define poverty, but they do not cause it…. If policymakers are truly concerned about helping those earning the lowest incomes in the state, the first question that they should ask relates not to their wage but to their skill level. Why is it that there are non-teenage workers whose skills are so low that they cannot command a “living wage” (to adopt the phrase used by supporters of higher minimum wages)? The answer to this question is beyond the scope of this paper.”

You know what's beyond the scope of this paper? Sanity, that's what. Because when EconoPuppet Roy Cordato gets lost in the frenzy of his free-market fantasies, matters of fact and fiction blur into a kind of wishful thinking only the Puppetmaster could truly appreciate.

But NC Policy Watch's best commentary is its closing paragraph about the lunatic called Macon whose name is on this report:

Postscript: Who is/was “Macon” and why is this report a “Macon Series report”?

The answer lies in the Locke Foundation’s peculiar penchant for resurrecting obscure reactionary figures from the distant past. It turns out that Nathaniel Macon was an early American anti-government crusader who apparently championed a number of “conservative” causes including opposition to both the establishment of the Navy and funding for public works, as well as the defense of slavery. One author called him “the most prominent nay-sayer in Congress–a ‘negative radical.’"

Makes perfect sense. The Pope Puppets want a world where prices and wages are left to the whims of people in power. It seems to me that we tried that for a at least a hundred years back before our own civil war. We all know how well that worked out.

Stop by NC Policy Watch and read the whole thing. They're on a roll.